Atkins Achieves Significant Increases in Productivity Leveraging HyperWorks Simulation Platform

TROY, Mich – Altair Engineering, Inc., a leading global provider of technology and services that empowers client innovation and decision-making, announced today, that international engineering and design consultancy Atkins has selected HyperWorks’ pre-and post-processing solutions, HyperMesh and HyperView as standard tools for future design projects. The decision follows measured business benefits from the suite including productivity and efficiency gains, the flexible business model and a common platform for supporting Atkins’ multi-solver environment.

“The majority of cost incurred when performing finite element (FE) analysis is during the initial model-generation phase, so reducing the amount of time spent at this stage is extremely valuable to us and our clients,” said Jon Gittoes, FE team leader at Atkins. “Basically it comes down to minimising the time it takes to get from initial geometry to a working model, and that’s what HyperMesh does so well. HyperMesh has excellent geometry idealization, which significantly improves our design efficiency and has a large impact on the overall project timescales.”

As a leader in engineering and design consultation to the aerospace market, Atkins is an approved supplier to leading international aerospace OEMs. Atkins’ recent project work includes aircraft heavy landing and bird-strike analysis for Airbus, Rolls-Royce gas turbines development and even the 1000mph BLOODHOUND Supersonic Car project. The efficiencies of the HyperWorks suite have played an important part in helping Atkins deliver successful projects to its global client base.

“The continuing trend towards composite materials and non-linear analysis is significantly increasing the complexity of analysis pre- and post-processing. Using a common tool to build models for a variety of analysis codes allows our engineers to work on a wide variety of projects,” Mr Gittoes added. “We are using HyperWorks to investigate problems as varied as the design of turbomachinery transmission test rigs, assessing aircraft heavy landings and the concept design of the BLOODHOUND SSC. HyperWorks has the features that we need to develop and manage large models, which is particularly important for our non-linear impact work.”

“Altair’s customer support team have also helped us integrate HyperWorks into our existing design processes and quickly train our engineers,” Mr Gittoes noted. “The Altair support team regularly visits and helps solve any of our technical issues. The most important advantage HyperWorks has given us is the flexibility to meet our clients’ needs. Whether that’s in terms of their timescales or in using the most appropriate solver code, it’s really about being able to deliver the results our clients need, when they need them.”

In addition to HyperMesh and HyperView, Atkins has successfully deployed HyperWorks’ optimization solution, OptiStruct, in the BLOODHOUND SSC project with excellent results. The technology is now being assessed broadly across Atkins’ aerospace projects to minimize material usage and component weight.

“It is gratifying to see Atkins realizing all the business benefits working with Altair and the HyperWorks simulation suite offers,” said Maurice Linscott, regional director, Altair UK operations. “With increasing pressure on consultancies to deliver projects on shorter timescales coupled with the drive for weight reductions and materials savings across the aerospace industry, it is vital that our clients are able to concentrate their efforts on activities that add value to their customers. Model generation is a vital, but functional, step in designing innovative products; HyperWorks is enabling our clients to significantly reduce this stage and to focus on delivering innovation throughout their design process.”